[ADJOURNED DEBATE.] [TWELFTH NIGHT.]

HC Deb 01 November 1882 vol 274 cc564-620

Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment to Question [20th February], as amended, That when it shall appear to Mr. Speaker, or to the Chairman of Ways and Means in a Committee of the whole House, during any Debate, that the subject has been adequately discussed, and that it is the evident sense of the House, or of the Committee, that the Question be now put, he may so inform the House or the Committee; and, if a Motion be made 'That the Question be now put,' Mr. Speaker, or the Chairman, shall forthwith put such Question; and, if the same be decided in the affirmative, the Question under discussion shall be put forthwith: Provided that the Question, 'That the Question be now put,' shall not be decided in the affirmative, if a Division be taken, unless it shall appear to have been supported by more than two hundred Members, or unless it shall appear to have been opposed by less than forty Members and supported by more than one hundred Members."—(Mr. Gladstone.)

And which Amendment was, In line 8, after the word "taken," to insert the words "unless it shall appear to have been supported by two-thirds of those present, and."—(Mr. Gibson.)

Question again proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

Debate resumed.

MR. O'DONNELL

said, that a great change had certainly come over the spirit of the Government in connection with the Amendment now before the House. He could not help thinking that the attitude now taken up by the Government was largely due to the success which had attended their recent active foreign policy. A few months ago the Premier was ready to accept the limitation of the Opposition, and to surrender the Government pretension to stop debate in that House by the vote of a bare Ministerial majority. The Government now, however, was no longer under the shadow of many defeats; it no longer rested under the depression resulting from the surrender of Candahar or the rout of Majuba Hill, but throned itself magnificently upon a pyramid of 5,000 slaughtered fellaheen, butchered on the principles of peace. He could not but associate the present stiffness of the Government purposes with their consciousness of standing on the moral attitude of that new position. They were told that the question before the House did not involve any Vote of Confidence, and the Premier appeared to think that the House ought to be indebted to his magnanimity for refraining from putting the Government screw on the Liberal Party. He, however, was not sure that the House at large had any particular reason for being grateful to the Premier for that exhibition of magnanimity. He strongly suspected that this refraining from putting on the Government screw at the present moment would not deprive the Government of more than a very small number of Liberal votes; while, on the other hand, it was hoped that by this show of magnanimity a certain number of Irish Members, who certainly would not give a Vote of Confidence in Her Majesty's Government, might be induced to support the Government, for they were carefully told that even a defeat would not involve a fall of the Coercion Ministry. Therefore, this refraining from putting on the Government screw would not lose the Government more than some half-dozen Liberal votes, while it was calculated to secure the accession of those of several dozens of trustful Irishmen. In vain, however, was the net spread in the sight of wary birds, and the Government manœuvre upon this occasion was so transparent that he trusted that it would deceive none but the most confiding souls. There was nothing more remarkable or more admirable among the many remarkable and admirable qualities of the eminent man who directed the Government of the country and led the Liberal Party whithersoever he pleased than his capacity at all times of turning his back upon himself. But when the right hon. Gentleman asked the House and the country to turn their backs upon all their traditions, he thought that he ventured a little beyond the limits of that indulgence which, of course, he could always claim in his own case. The Premier made a fundamental proposition, and based it upon a fundamental fact, which could be accepted as a fact only by virtue of the exercise of his own remarkable faculty of forgetting the past and supposing that others could do the same. For instance, in comment- ing yesterday upon the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson), the Premier characterized it is an innovation brought forward for the purpose of enabling the minority to resist the right of the majority to close a debate, when they thought fit. But, so far from this being the first time that a right had been claimed on the part of the minority to resist the will of the majority in such a matter, this was the first time that there had been claimed on the part of the majority a right to stop discussion which the minority desired to continue. Therefore it was the Premier, and not the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who was the innovator. He confessed that from an Irish point of view it was a misfortune that this Amendment should have been brought forward by a Gentleman of the political antecedents of the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin. He yielded to none in fully recognizing the high political character and the great abilities of the right hon. and learned Gentleman; but from an Irish point of view he must regard him as a head-centre of that Irish faction which absolutely opposed all Irish reform, and whose connection with the English Conservatives caused the latter to be regarded with suspicion throughout Ireland, and prejudiced them in the eyes of the Irish people. The accident that this Amendment, limiting the operation of the clôture, had been brought forward by a Gentleman of anti-Irish antecedents, was being utilized at that very moment throughout Ireland by the supporters of Whiggery for the purpose of inducing the Representatives of Irish popular feeling to give their votes to the Government out of hostility to the standard-bearer of the Opposition on that occasion. For his own part, however, he could only judge the Amendment upon its merits, irrespective of the political character of its introducer. The first argument that was brought forward by the admirers of the Whig Administration in Ireland against this Amendment was that if it were accepted it would secure a form of clôture which could be easily applied to suppress Irish opposition to coercion. On that point he should wish to remark that, thanks to the action of Her Majesty's most Liberal Government, the Irish Party, even if they had the fullest licence for Obstruc- tion, would have no opportunity for opposing coercion for the next three years, during which the Coercion Act would remain in force. He was also of opinion that none of the new proposals of the Government could increase the power of the Chairman of Committees to suppress the voice of the Irish popular Representatives at a critical moment in a discussion. The Chairman had already the power of suppressing and of expelling Irish Eepresentatives—those who were absent as well as those who were present. He had already the power of deciding in foro eonscientiœ that any Member from Ireland, whether loquacious or silent, was obstructing the progress of Public Business, and he could remove him from any further discussing the most important Irish affairs. And when the action of the Chairman of Committees, or possibly that of the Speaker, was challenged in this House, the Minister of the day would come forward and prevent any reversal of the proceeding of the Chairman or of the Speaker in suppressing Irish representation. It was said there was a possibility of the Irish Party being worsened by' the proposed Rule; but he denied that possibility. The Government had reduced the Irish Party to such a condition that as regards Obstruction on Irish questions it was impossible to place it in a worse position. So far as the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin proposed to place the opposition of a minority, however small, at the mercy of a majority, however large, he did not approve of that Amendment; and if that Amendment was coupled with a declaration of the right hon. and learned Member's hostility to all propositions for the clôture whatever he should still regard that Amendment with very considerable suspicion. He wished formally to protest against the idea that any majority, however large, ought to be able by brute force to suppress any minority, however small. And in doing so he was merely following the expressed opinion of the Premier himself, when the Premier was another man. It might be not only the right, but the duty of a minority, however small, to dare the clôture, to dare suspension, and to dare expulsion, in order to concentrate public opinion upon an Act which ought to be a subject of popular detestation, and which ought to rouse the national indignation against a Ministry desirous of suppressing the voice of an oppressed nation. But he had to oppose, above all, the proposition of the Government to make a discussion in that House dependent upon the vote of a bare majority—that was to say, of a Ministerial majority. The Premier declared in the first instance, and magnanimously pledged himself, that if the clôture by a bare majority were too oppressive to the minority he would himself come forward to undo what he was doing to-day. When the Premier made that gratuitous and magnanimous declaration a Conservative Member was overheard to say—"Yes, as soon as we begin to use the majority clôture, the Premier will start an anti-atrocity agitation against us." He concurred in that opinion. He felt positive that in all consistency and in all sincerity the Premier would act up to his declaration if the clôture fell into the hands of a Tory majority, precisely in the manner suspected by that Conservative Member. He, for one, was not prepared to leave the liberties of independent Members to the fluctuating intentions of Premiers in Office or out of Office. Then an artless confidence had been expressed in the immaculate conduct of the presiding authority. The Premier had stated—he had taken down his words—"that the Speaker could not deviate from the impartiality of the Chair." He thought that statement was deserving of being enshrined in some museum of curiosities. Why should not the Speaker deviate from the impartiality of the Chair? The Premier had said that to make use of the Speaker for Party purposes would be the ruin of the Party assisting in so nefarious a scheme. He would remind the House that the impartiality of the Chair was only a recent tradition. It was only the Speakers of late years who had made themselves deserving of confidence. Formerly the Speaker was the minion of the Monarch; and the intention of the Premier was to make him for the future the fugle-man of the majority. Why could not the Speaker deviate from the impartiality of the Chair? In every foreign Legislature—in every foreign country, whether of different blood or of the same blood as our own—in every Assembly where the majority was armed with the clôture the President had failed to maintain inviolable impartiality. And why should not an Englishman or an Irishman appointed to the Chair prove as frail and as partial as the President of any other Assembly working under the operation of the gag? It was not the deviation of the Speaker from the ordinary path of duty that was to be feared; but there was the probability of the Speaker being appointed by a Party vote in order that he might use the gag for Party purposes, and it might be that under such circumstances the Speaker would not shrink from using his power in conformity with the wishes of the Party which had elected him. Might there not be, in the present day, one or two Gentlemen supporters of the Government who would be found capable of acting as Party Speakers? He had great respect for a Liberal in the abstract, but a Liberal in the concrete was a fallible being. The eminent man who directed the Government was a master of words, whose every sentence seemed exactly formed to convey what he wished to convey, and not one iota or one atom beyond. He was a master of the English language, approaching more closely the accuracy of the Mediaeval schoolmen than any other man of modern times. Therefore, when he made a declaration on any subject, such declaration must be closely scrutinized. Now, he had stated that the Government would carefully keep the Chair from any semblance of connection with the majority. That was an exact description of the Government policy. It was true the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian desired carefully to keep the Chair from any "semblance" of connection with the majority; but he intended to keep the reality of a connection between the Speaker and the Ministerial majority. The Speaker was only to act in accordance with the "evident sense" of the House; but that meant the evident sense of the Ministerial majority. Even in the case of the most high-minded, impartial, and able Speaker there was no adequate guarantee in the declaration that the Speaker should judge when a subject had been sufficiently discussed; and, therefore, they ought to require some further guarantee, such as that suggested by the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin. It was not in the power of any man, whether he sat in the Chair or in any other part of the House, to say with absolute certainty that a subject had been sufficiently discussed, that all the light which might be thrown upon it had been so thrown, and that the sudden closing of the debate would not deprive the House of the advantage of hearing important arguments and information. There were, moreover, two circumstances which would singularly aggravate the operation of the Ministerial clôture in this country. It was the habit of the House to transact most of its Business in the evening and at night time; and it was also the habit of the Chair to choose, in preference to all other Members of the House, the Members sitting on the two Front Benches. Even under the present rule of liberty the time at which the House transacted its Business militated most seriously against the chances of independent Members getting the ear of the House. As a Rule, they were relegated to that unhonoured calm of the dinner hour, which was beneath the consideration of Irish Attorney Generals. In foreign Legislatures having the clôture there was some such arrangement as an impartial inscription of the names of Members desiring to take part in the debate in a list which was followed seriatim by the President; but even with that safeguard in foreign Legislatures the action of independent Members was practically reduced almost to a nullity; but under the proposed clôture here, it would be found that the Leviathans of the two Front Benches would be chosen by preference as before, and after the House had been entranced or wearied by their contributions to the subject under discussion, the moment arrived for the application of the gag, and the independent opinion of the House was shut out from further consideration of the question. The operation of the two-thirds' majority principle was sought to be tested in Ireland by the incorrigible advocates of Whiggery, by a sole application to the case of the Liberal Party being in power. The very circumscribed success of the Land Act and the Arrears Act had apparently filled some gentlemen in Ireland with unbounded confidence in the wisdom of the Government; but the proposal ought to be tested by the case of a Conservative Government being in power. Supposing a Conservative Secretary of State for India were endeavouring to prevent ugly revelations in regard to the Bengal gaols, would not the Liberal Party refuse the two-thirds' vote which would be necessary to silence inconvenient criticism? Again, under a Conservative Government, even in Irish affairs, were the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) to come forward and call attention to the shortcomings of remedial legislation, although the Conservative Government might be as anxious as the present Government to prevent a discussion of that kind, the Liberal minority would no doubt refuse the requisite two-thirds' majority or the suppression of the hon. Member for the City of Cork. But even with a Liberal Government in Office he was not prepared to give a blank cheque to be filled up at the pleasure of the Treasury Bench. They knew that the views of the Liberal Party on denominational education in England and elsewhere were, at least, open to suspicion on the part of many Members; and supposing under a Liberal Government a proposition was brought forward by which the voluntary system in this country would be seriously impaired, if not destroyed, it would then be in the highest degree useful for the minority to have the power to prevent the Birmingham school from having it all its own way on the important subject of religious education. Again, on the question of the Parliamentary Oath, the minority of the House even under a Liberal Government ought to be able to prevent a bare Ministerial majority from imposing the gag on a matter so intimately affecting the most serious aspects of political and social life. He did not know whether the veneration of "the Holy Carpet" was to take the place of the older traditions of that Assembly; but whatever might be the views of the gifted man who directed the destinies and apparently shaped the convictions of the Liberal Party, he did not think that the House ought to be disarmed, or that a minority ought to be disarmed, of the power of securing a full and fair discussion on those important questions. Again, they were promised a large measure of Parliamentary Reform coupled with a large redistribution of seats. That delicate wit, known in America as "jerrymandering" was capable of application in this country in connection with a proposal for the redistribu- tion of seats. Such a redistribution might be carried out, even by a Liberal Ministry, as would alter the whole political map of the country and totally falsify its representation. A minority without distinction of Party ought not to be deprived of the power of imposing some efficient check upon the whims of a Ministerial majority. It might be of the utmost possible importance that the Liberal Government should be prevented from closing discussion on a question which might involve the disfranchisement of the most popular classes and the most populous districts in Ireland. The application of the clôture by a bare majority would be especially objectionable in two classes of cases—namely, when private and personal grievances were being heard in which the great mass of the House was not interested, and in questions of vital political importance. In ordinary circumstances it would probably not be worth while for the Government to employ the clôture; but, at crucial moments of the Constitution, and at great political crises, when the form of the next Parliament might depend upon rushing, or not rushing, a particular measure through the House, those were the times when there would be the greatest danger of the cloture being used to achieve a change which would place the Government in a position independent of the defeated Party. It would be at such times of crises that it would be worth while for a partizan majority and a partizan Speaker to cast in their lot with the voice of an ambitious Minister. In Parliamentary as in private life descents might be made from which there was no return; catastrophes might be brought about of which the effects could never be obliterated; and if ever a domineering Minister, who was open to no argument, but believed solely in himself, employed the elôlure, the danger of its conscientious use would reach the maximum. For these reasons, and because he was sure that that clôture by a Ministerial majority was not clôture against Obstruction, for that was already provided against under other farms of Parliamentary coercion, but because he believed that it was directed against freedom of discussion by Constitutional minorities engaged in inconvenient criticism of dangerous Ministerial proposals, he should oppose the proposals of the Government.

MR. SPENCER

said, he must apologize for intruding his opinions in a debate of so much importance, and also claim the indulgence usually accorded to Members when they addressed the House for the first time. The hon. Member who had just sat down had spoken with more force and more fervour than he could himself command; but, speaking for his own constituency, he might assure the House with at least equal confidence that the part of the country which he had the honour to represent was wholly in favour of the Government proposals. The question, however, was one from which. Party spirit ought, if possible, be excluded. The Rules had been framed in the interests of the whole House, and not of any particular Party; for while Liberals could not expect to be always in power, hon. Gentleman opposite could not look forward to perpetual Opposition. Such being necessarily the political prospects of the two Parties, it was singular that hon. Members opposite should affect to think the present Government so dead to all the traditions of the House as to wish to gag speech and destroy that freedom of debate of which they were all so proud. Surely it must be obvious to everyone that it was not freedom of discussion that the Liberal Party wished to do away with; it was that licence which was eating into their very life. They were obliged to deal with the evil in this way, simply because they could not overcome it in any other. That, at any rate, was his firm conviction, and he felt that in supporting the Resolution he should be voting for a measure which would restore rather than curtail free speech, and would rejuvenate the functions of an Assembly which was administrative as well as deliberative.

MR. SPENCER BALFOUR

said, he was a Representative of a Midland Counties constituency, and his constituency in all commercial matters looked to Birmingham as their Metropolitan centre, so that he was sure if the action of the Birmingham Caucus had assumed the activity that was assigned to it, he should have been certain to hear of it; but he had never had one single representation of auy kind or description from any such organization. For his own part, he was strongly in favour of the Resolution as it stood, and failed to see much force in the arguments for the Amendment. Those hon. Members who had expressed their fears lest the impartiality of the Speaker should be imperilled had apparently forgotten that the Speaker himself was chosen virtually by the sense of the whole House, but, strictly speaking, by the votes of a bare majority. If the Amendment were carried, the election of a Speaker would be precisely that question for the determination of which a two-thirds' majority would be thought necessary; but until that change was made, it ought not to be said that the clôture would endanger the impartiality of the Chair. That being the case, there was no reason why the intervention of the Speaker should not be accepted as unanimously as his election had been. If, as some Members of the Opposition had suggested, the vote on that subject was taken by ballot, he would vote in the same way as he at present intended. As an independent Member he objected to the Amendment, because it would throw all power into the hands of the two Front Benches, and it would revive the old clôture by arrangement, which the right hon. Gentleman the late Secretary of State for Home Department (Sir R. Assheton Cross) regretted to lose, while professing to oppose all clôture. Many warnings had been uttered against a union of the two Front Benches; the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) would perhaps continue to preach the danger of such a union until he sat on a Front Bench himself. The necessity would never arise to preserve freedom of debate on a question on which the two Front Benches disagreed; the necessity would only arise when they agreed. There were many questions that small minorities might be anxious to debate at length that were unpopular with official and ex-official minds. Among them were questions that were attractive to the hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) and the sitting Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere), questions relating to the Crown, to the Royal Family, to the Army and Navy, snd to diplomatic arrangements; questions which the Front Benches were naturally anxious to shirk, and the discussion of which would be easily prevented by a two-thirds' majority. Many speakers had professed to discover the true secret of the Resolution. But what was the true secret of the Amendment? The Front Opposition Bench said—"Why should this Rule be imposed upon us?" They practically said—" Impose it if you will upon the Irish Members and the Fourth Party and upon the Radicals below the Gangway, and though we object to the clôture altogether we will submit to it with great resignation, so long as it is not applied to us. But the very moment you venture to make it applicable to us, we will proclaim that it violates in touching us all the principles of freedom and fair play." Such a contention seemed to him to be in the last degree unreasonable. In so far as they in that House represented the free choice of their constituents they all spoke with the same authority and were entitled to the same treatment, and feeling also that the Resolution would remedy an intolerable evil, he should vote against the Amendment.

MR. J. A. CAMPBELL

said, that there was no inconsistency in being opposed to the introduction of the clôture at all, and at the same time being anxious to make any regulations for its application as little objectionable as possible. Several speakers who had attacked the Amendment had objected to it on the ground of its introducing what they called a new principle—that of requiring a proportional or artificial majority. They seemed to have forgotten that that principle was already in the Resolution as regarded the House under its normal strength; and all that was proposed by the Amendment was to extend that principle, although in somewhat different proportions, to full Houses as well as to small Houses. But the Amendment aimed at something much more important than merely to give symmetry to the Resolution of the Government. The Amendment was required in order to make the Resolution consistent with itself, and to prevent it being a contradiction in terms. The Resolution as it stood was inconsistent. It provided that when the Speaker or the Chairman gave it as his opinion that it was the evident sense of the House that the debate should close a division should be taken. What was the meaning of taking a division? If there was any meaning in it at all, under the circumstances, it must be in order to ascertain whether the Speaker or Chairman was justified in the opinion he had given, to confirm his opinion if it were right, and to correct it if it were wrong. This led, however, to the question of what was meant by the evident sense of the House; and the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Gibson) who proposed the Amendment reminded them that they had had an explanation of that phrase from the Prime Minister, who, in his speech on the 20th February, explained it to mean something more than the will of one Party or of a mere majority. Now, the inconsistency of the Resolution as it stood was shown in this—that while it proposed to give effect only to the evident sense of the House, it provided that clôture should be applied in the case of a full House by a mere majority. They would then have this anomalous and somewhat absurd position—that, while the Speaker or the Chairman had given an opinion which the vote proved to have been a mistaken opinion, effect would have to be given to the opinion, as if it had been correct, in consequence of a vote which proved it to have been incorrect. The Prime Minister yesterday argued that there was no inconsistency in the Resolution. He said that the vote on such an occasion would not give the true measure of the sympathy felt for the Motion for clôture,because the friends and partizans of the Member whose lips were to be closed would abstain from voting for clôture, even although they might wish it carried. He said—"The party friendly to him"—the Member offending—"remains silent, and if a division be taken they cannot afford to vote against him." Thus the Prime Minister argued that a mere majority in favour of clôture might mean, or would probably mean, a much larger measure of support than was represented by the actual votes in its favour. His words were— I entirely repel and repudiate the assumption that the number of persons ready to vote that a debate should terminate is a proper test of the number who really wish that it should so terminate. That argument was, at all events, an admission that a mere majority, if that was all that could be shown to be in favour of clôture, would not be enough to adduce in proof of the evident sense of the House. He (Mr. Campbell) had not long had the honour of a seat in the House, and, therefore, could not speak with any confidence from his own knowledge of Parliamentary affairs; but he would appeal to those who had had experience whether the principle involved in the Prime Minister's argument was not an extraordinary novelty in Parliamentary discussion? It came to this, that in estimating a vote of the House—not estimating it, be it observed, merely for the sake of their own private satisfaction, but in connection with a regulation of Parliamentary Procedure to be founded upon that vote—they were to take into account not the vote as it was in itself, but the vote as modified by the number of Members, uncertain and unascertainable, who, in their opinion, were likely to have felt one way and voted another. This very ingenious argument of the Prime Minister, in his humble opinion, entirely failed to meet the case of which he was speaking. It applied to another ease altogether. There might be some force in his argument if the question under discussion had been the silencing of a Member who had been wearying the House by his speaking. It might be a legitimate argument to use with reference to the 5th Resolution, but not to the 1st. It had no application whatever to the question of putting an end to a debate. There was no individual Member to be especially aggrieved by a proposal of clôture. There were no personal considerations entering so prominently into the question of bringing a debate to a close as to be likely to interfere in the slightest degree with the freedom, with which all should vote for it who wished it. Then, let it be remembered to what condition of the House it was that the Amendment applied. It was only to the House when so full that as many as 200 Members or more would vote for clôture. It was to a House, therefore, of 400 Members at least that it would apply. The protection of minorities in Houses under the normal strength might be held to be satisfactorily provided for in the latter part of the Resolution as it stood. It was with regard to a House of over 400 Members that there was need for such provision as was proposed in the Amendment. And was it not in a full House that there was, in some respects, most need for such a provision? What did a full House mean? It meant that Party feeling was running high; that Party interests were keenly felt; and he ventured to think also that it meant the House in circumstances under which it was more than ordinarily difficult for the Chair to determine what the evident sense of the House was with reference to clôture Why, then, refuse a safeguard to the minority against the curtailment of their opportunities of debate—why refuse a safeguard to the Speaker against his making an irremediable mistake, in the very circumstances in which such a safeguard was most required? It was said that their fears were groundless, and that this power would hardly ever be exercised, and never exercised tyrannically. Why, then, object to having this additional safeguard? It was only a safeguard against abuse—only against the power being used when the sense of the House was not in its favour. This Amendment, he humbly thought, could not, even in the estimation of the Government, be opposed to the spirit and the principle of the Resolution, or there never would have been any expression of their willingness to accept it, even upon trial. But if the Amendment were not accepted, then, in the interests of consistency, something more should be done. There should be a deletion from the Resolution of all mention of the evident sense of the House. That was a misleading, and not altogether an honest expression, inasmuch as while they pretended to give effect to the evident sense of the House, what would be really done was to give effect to the will of the majority. It was argued yesterday that the Amendment proposed to alter the Constitutional mode of expressing the opinion of the House. There was a two-fold answer to that. In the first place, as he had already said, if there was any proposition of the kind it was in the Resolution already; but a more important answer was, that closing a debate by a vote of the House was a wholly exceptional measure in the Procedure of Parliament; and while other questions, however important, might, after full discussion, be carried by a mere majority, the question of stopping debate was something very different. Nay, more, it was something that was already recognized by the Government as requiring to be treated differently from other questions, inasmuch as it was only on the assumption that the evident sense of the House was in favour of it that a vote was to be taken—the evident sense meaning, as had been already explained by the Prime Minister, not the will of one Party or of a mere majority.

MR. ARTHUR ARNOLD

said, he felt sure that the hon. Member for Dungarvan would agree with him that he (Mr. O'Donnell) was one of the last Members who was likely to be injuriously silenced by any Resolution which the House might adopt with reference to the closing of debate. He had listened to a great number of the hon. Gentleman's speeches, and long ago he had come to the conclusion that he was a man of great ability. He should be glad, however, if that ability were guided by those Liberal instincts which were the leading characteristics of the political Party with which the hon. Gentleman generally acted. He was willing to admit that the Resolution owed its origin to Irish Obstruction, and he was inclined to think that in the near future, when they thought of the evils of Obstruction, it would be the opinion of the country that they were greatly indebted to the Irish Representatives for having by indirect means provided the House with a machinery which ought to be in the possession of every Representative Assembly. He wished to address a few observations upon the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson), especially as it concerned those important minorities which sat below the Gangway on either side of the House. On the Ministerial side, below the Gangway, were grouped the Representatives of a larger number of electors of this country than those which supported hon. Members in any other equal section of the House. Of the four quarters of the House, that where he had the honour to sit was, for that reason, eminently the most popular section of the House. That characteristic was not due to themselves, but to the greater numbers of electors of whom they were the Representatives. On the other side, the Irish Members of the popular Party in that country formed the most conspicuous group. But they did not for get that one-fifth of the adult Irish population of the United Kingdom was resident in Great Britain, and was generally represented on the Ministerial side of the House. Therefore, in regard to these debates upon Procedure, great community of interest existed between those who sat below the Gangway on both sides of the House. Now, they had had some experience—more than he hoped they should ever have again—in the matter of two-thirds' majorities. The Leader of the Conservative Party said in 1880 that that House knew nothing of two-thirds' majorities, meaning that such a departure from the ancient usage and practice of the House should never be adopted. But, since then, they had seen it in operation upon the Rules of Urgency, and they had learned from those Rules what was the meaning of a two-thirds' majority, and they now thoroughly understood that it was the concert of the Front Benches, without any reference whatever to the minorities sitting below the Gangway. He thought they were greatly indebted to the noble Lords and hon. Gentlemen who acted as Whips; but he confessed he never felt any obligation to the noble Lord the Member for Flint (Lord Richard Grosvenor) greater than on the present occasion. By what arts the noble Lord had induced the Conservative Whips to combine with him in making a preliminary display for the advantage of the House of the peculiar consequences of closure by two-thirds' majority he could not say; but it was now known to all the world that as early as Friday last the Liberal and Tory Whips had decided that that debate was to be expedited, and the division taken at a certain hour on a certain day. It must be clear to every hon. Member that the Irish Members and the independent Liberals counted for nothing at all in that arrangement. That was closure by two-thirds' majority. He hoped the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) would not be a deserter from the interests of Members below the Gangway upon that occasion. It would be to them a great loss. He should then suppose that the noble Lord had been shown the position of the Conservative Party on a large map, and he was willing to admit that the anti-legislative interests of that Party were concerned in maintaining the Amendment. Those who desired that the House should continue to do nothing could not do better than advocate the decision of every important question by a two-thirds' majority. And that was what it would probably come to if the House were to accept that Amendment. There were some for whom he had great respect, who thought that the principal and most useful function of the House was to spin debates. As far as the people were concerned, he thought he could discuss a question as usefully in the Town Hall of Salford as on the floor of that House; but they came there for the purposes of legislation. That was the place, above all others, in which legislation could be initiated and undertaken; and he had no fear whatever that any closure of debate would ever, in this country of free speech, and of a free Press, render it even difficult to give due and legitimate expression to any grievance whatever. He would boldly put this question to the House—Which was better for the progressive interests of the country, that debate should be closed by the organized clamour of the two Front Benches, or by the clamour of the whole of one side with the assistance of the independent half of the other side? That was the choice between closure by a majority and closure by a two-thirds' majority. He declared unhesitatingly for the latter. If the two-thirds' vote were adopted, the Prime Minister need never have regard to the opinions of Irish Members who followed the hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell) in encouraging the exercise of the closing power, and equally the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote) need never appeal to the love of liberty which was spontaneous in that part of the House; the whole affair would be an arrangement in the Lobby between the Whips and the ex-Whips of Downing Street. He thought he had established that it was the interest and the duty of independent Members who sat below the Gangway on either side of the House to support the proposal of the Government. But that proposal had other and general claims. In the first place, it was in harmony with the ancientand time-honoured practice of the House. The sense of the House was an expression well known in the history of Parliament. Decision by a majority represented a principle, and, as the Prime Minister had said, it represented the only sound principle upon which questions could be decided in the House. The hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. Marriott) said that but for him (Mr. Arthur Arnold) his famous Amendment would have been a protest against a "bare majority." If that were so, he was glad he was instrumental in preventing a loose and inaccurate expression. When they talked of a "bare" or a "simple" majority, they did not say whether they meant a majority of 1, or 10, or of 20. Once they left the safe principle of majority, they were driven to some definite proportion, and there they could find neither principle nor permanence. One Gentleman said two-thirds, another three - fourths, a third five-eighths. One was as bad as the other for the purpose of Public Business. There were three questions to be considered in deciding how to vote upon this Amendment. The first was—"Do you desire that the House, without resort to unauthorized and unsatisfactory methods, should obtain a power of defeating wilful and persistent Obstruction?" The second was—"Do you desire that the method of that power should encourage the mechanical or the independent expression of opinion in this House?" and, thirdly—"Do you desire that Procedure should have regard to precedent and principle?" These three questions would be answered in the affirmative by those who supported the Government on this important occasion. In giving his voice and vote in that direction, he had this further satisfaction—that the Opposition, whose Members and whose opinions he had learned every day that he had sat in that House still more to esteem and to respect, would never, after their coming defeat, desire the repeal of a Rule which would prove an inestimable advantage to any Administration in this country which desired faithfully to carry out the legislative behests of the great majority of the people of the United Kingdom.

MR. EDWARD CLARKE

Sir, I proposed to the House in February last what I then believed and still believe to be the most Conservative way of dealing with the difficulty under which the House has laboured during the last few years. In the present case, I object to the clôture altogether, because I think it an odious and unnecessary Rule. Its necessity has not been proved. No doubt, the origin of its suggestion may be referred to the memorable occasion when you, Sir, after many hours of debate, took a course which afterwards received the tacit approbation of the House. Still, Sir, that was a course which, by your own confession, was a very unusual and arbitrary course, and one which the Speaker ought never to be called upon to take again. I contend, however, that the usual modes of putting down Obstruction had never been tried on that occasion. Appeals were made again and again to the Chairman to put in force the powers with which the House had invested him; but the request was refused, and many leading men on both sides left the House rather than remain parties to the deliberate abnegation of the powers vested in the Chair. The object of the present Resolution is not simply to put down Obstruction. It was introduced for Party purposes, in order to enable the majority now in power to force through the House measures which have been mentioned by name by the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India, and which they do not think they would be able to pass if they could not gag and silence their opponents. Although I have a most sincere desire to review the Rules of the House, with the object of getting rid of Obstruction, I believe the Resolution now proposed will not meet that evil, while it will create an amount of passionate Party hostility circling round and threatening the authority of the Chair that will be most disastrous to the House. Sir, if there is any gratitude in the Government, the hon. Member for Salford (Mr. Arthur Arnold) will soon cease to be interested in private or independent Members; for in the early part of the year, by inducing the hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. Marriott) to tone down his Amendment, the hon. Member for Salford saved the Government from defeat, and enabled it to postpone the decision upon this question until a time when either accident or arrangement gives them a much more favourable chance with regard to the result of the debate. There is something almost cynical in the preference which the hon. Member has expressed for organized clamour on the Liberal side, reinforced by Members below the Gangway, rather than for the organized clamour of the Front Benches. If the country were told that the House of Commons were going to hand over its proceedings to organized clamour, it would surely think that the House had lost the capacity for dealing with its own Rules.

MR. ARTHUR ARNOLD

explained that he had not recommended organized clamour, but had said that the organized clamour of both sides would be preferable to that of the two Front Benches.

MR. EDWARD CLARKE

I do not, Sir, imagine that the hon. Member desires to resort to organized clamour; but the difficulty is that no one on the Liberal side will tell us what indication other than by clamour can be given of the evident sense of the House. I, Sir, am in favour of the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin, for while I am against the clôture altogether, I desire, if we must have it, to put the strongest check upon its exercise; but if that Amendment be defeated, I hope we shall have an opportunity of discussing and deciding against the Rule as a whole. The arithmetical puzzle contained in the Prime Minister's proposal has been dealt with over and over again. Thus, if 5 Members desire to continue a debate, it will require a majority of 20 to 1 to put them to silence; if the minority is increased to 29 it will require a majority of 2½ to 1 to close the debate. If the minority is 40 the majority must be 5 to 1, if it is 100, the majority must be 2 to 1; but if it reaches the substantial number of 200, a bare majority will put it to silence. I do not believe in the firmness of the safeguards which the Prime Minister relies upon for the protection of the small minorities, because as time goes on the absurdity will become apparent of requiring 20 to 1 to close the debate when the minority is only 5, while a bare majority can close it when the minority is 200. There is an absolute want of principle in the Resolution. Supposing that 42 Members vote in favour of continuing debate and 190 for closing it, by the Rule as it stands the debate cannot be closed. The moment that happens the House will say that it is not what was intended, and the arithmetical safeguards will be dismissed. It must not be forgotten, Sir, that as long as government by Party is the rule in this House, the larger minority will always be disposed to protect the smaller minority against the Government. The Prime Minister said that they could not accept this doctrine of two-thirds, because they would put upon the Speaker the impossible task of saying what proportion of Members in the House, or within its precincts, were in favour of closing a debate. That, Sir, is the very burden that in a House of less than 200 Members we are laying upon the Speaker or the Chairman of Committees. In such a case the Chairman of Committees must take his information from the Whips, or where else can he get it? He cannot go prowling about the House to find out how many Members are in favour of closing the debate; and he must get his information from somebody. Although the evident sense of the Members actually present in the House may be in favour of closing a debate, it may be found, on a division, when the Members who are in the Library, the Dining Room, the Smoking Room, and on the Terrace were called in to record their votes, that there is a majority in favour of ncotinuing the debate. Thus, the Speaker or Chairman of Committees will be held out to the country as having mistaken the evident sense of the House. How, Sir, is the evident sense of the House to be ascertained when there may be organized clamour on one side of the House and organized silence on the other? Suppose that in a House of 401 Members the Speaker declares that it is the evident sense of the House that the debate shall be closed, and the Motion be carried by 201 to 200, the clôture will be applied in circumstances under which its warmest advocate has never suggested that it should be employed. The Prime Minister has said that if the clôture were used by any Government for Party purposes, it would be fatal to them when they went to the country. But in this case the Ministry has not had the courage of their opinions, for instead of throwing upon the Government of the day the reponsibility of closing debate, they propose to skulk behind the Speaker's Chair, and guard themselves from the indignation of the country by holding up as the shield and cover to all their proceedings the sanctity of the tradition which, happily, has always attached itself to the Office of the Speaker. Ministers, in other words, will throw all the responsibility of initiating the clôture upon the Speaker, and there will be no chance of getting at the real culprit. If the Speaker should think it the evident sense of the House that the debate should be closed, and someone, perhaps an obscure and unknown supporter of the Government should move that the Question be put, and if upon a division the clôture were carried by 201 to 200 votes, then we are told that the minority may go and make their complaint to the country. But the moment that is done one of the Ministers will go down and, in the most suave and persuasive manner, congratulate his Party on the success with which the clôture has been carried out, and say that it was the impartial opinion of the Speaker which induced them to close the debate. That would be what the Prime Minister has called "a nefarious proceeding." I will not, Sir, stop to inquire how far the language of some of the right hon. Gentleman's Colleagues justifies the expression; but when persons take that course, and move from behind the Speaker's Chair that the Vote be put, they will be able to cover themselves with the authority of the Speaker. I protest against the assumption that it is the part of the minority to make known their grievances in the country or in the public Press. This House, Sir, is the place where it is our duty to speak and our right to be heard; and to tell us to make our complaint at public meetings or in the columns of the Press is to do violence to the traditions of Parliament, and will be in itself the heaviest blow that has ever been struck at the character of those Parliamentary institutions of which the people have so long been proud. With regard to the question whether a Minister should move that the Question be put, I hold that, as the imposition of the clôture was an important act, it should be a responsible act. The profit and the responsibility ought to go together, and as it is the Ministry, because they have the majority of the House, which will have the profit of the act, it would have been only straightforward in them if they had adopted the Amendment of the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Bryce). "But," says the Prime Minister, "it is not the indignation of the country only which will punish; the Speaker could not occupy the Chair for a month if he dealt unfairly with a large minority." It is, Sir, one of the painful circumstances of the debate that it compels Members to discuss the possibility, nay, the probability, of a Speaker acting unfairly. But if the Speaker should act in that way, how is the minority to mate the occupancy of that Chair impossible? By the hypothesis that the majority of the House will have approved the Speaker's decision and profited by it, and if the Speaker should be attacked the majority of the House will defend him. But to what a prospect does the Prime Minister—I will not say at the end, but towards the end, of a great Parliamentary career—invite the House to look forward? The right hon. Gentleman asks the House to accept a Resolution which, it is conceded, may be abused for Party purposes, but refuses the safeguard suggested from this side of the House—a safeguard which a few months ago he was willing to accept—and tells us to appeal to other and illegitimate safeguards. Are the defeated minority so to badger, harass, and attack the Speaker as to make it impossible for him to continue to occupy the Chair? If the sanction of the Resolution can only be enforced by a course which will destroy the authority of the Speaker altogether and leave the Chair absolutely bare of those traditions which until lately have been found a useful and an effectual check upon the license of debate, that is a result which will be disastrous. Sir, the tone of the Government on this subject is very different now from what it was in February, when it was believed they were within a few votes of defeat. The question of the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) has not been, and cannot he, answered—Why the concession of the Prime Minister on the 6th of May is now withdrawn? Two things, Sir, have happened since then—the Egyptian campaign has been fought and the Kilmainham Treaty has been made. These things may possibly have altered the balance of Parties and opinions in this House. Until the Egyptian campaign has been fully and fairly examined it will continue to appear a credit to Her Majesty's Government. I believe a full and fair examination will strip them of the credit; and I sincerely hope before being dismissed from the present Sitting of Parliament some opportunity will be found for discussing that wanton and unnecessary war. But, besides, there has been made that arrangement by which the aid of the hon. Member for Cork City and his Party is to be given to the Liberal proceedings of the present Government by virtue of that letter which has become notorious in the political history of the country. ["Oh!" and "Hear, hear!"] There is no use in crying "Oh!" though I can understand that the Liberal Party should begin as early as possible to practise those inarticulate noises which may hereafter be used with some effect. The letter to which I referred was read in the House at the instance of the right hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster). ["Question!"] But that letter, and what has happened in consequence, may possibly enable the Government to count upon the support of those with regard to whose position the Home Secretary spoke a little bitterly in the early part of this year. Whether that be so or not, whether the Government are going to have a large majority on this Amendment or no majority at all, the country will come to understand by these continued debates the real characteristics of the proposals which have been made. The argument from experience was stricken down when the Prime Minister confessed that, when, after mature deliberation, he brought the matter before the House, he had been misinformed with respect to the practice in foreign countries and in the Colonies. It is perfectly true, Sir, that this Rule is in operation in the United States and in France. But from our knowledge of the Parliamentary proceedings in those two countries we shall be scarcely disposed to adopt this practice from their example. There is corruption in the Parliamentary Government of the United States, paralysis in the Parliamentary Government of France. I hope the House will pause long before accepting the clôture in any form; but that, if it does accept the clôture, it will at least insist on the safeguards proposed by this Amendment.

MR. STANSFELD

said, the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth (Mr. E. Clarke) had commenced his speech by the mis-statement that Her Majesty's Government and the Liberal Party had promulgated to the country that the object of the 1st Resolution was to put down Obstruction, and he had then gone on to say that it now turned out that the object was the purely Party purpose of aiding the Government to force through the House measures which otherwise they would not he able to pass. To show the inaccuracy of that statement, it was only necessary to refer to the opening speech of the Prime Minister on the 20th of February, in which the right hon. Gentleman had carefully guarded himself against the supposition that this Resolution was to be directed against Obstruction. What he had stated was, that it was directed against frivolous, repeated, and prolonged speeches, and that with regard to Obstruction he did not think this 1st Resolution upon the clôture by any means the most important of the Resolutions. As regarded the charge of the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth against the Members of the Government and the Liberal Party, that their object had been to force certain measures through Parliament, he did not know to what the hon. and learned Gentleman referred, unless to certain speeches of the President of the Board of Trade, who had merely said that when the Procedure Resolutions were discussed and passed into Standing Orders of the House, it would then become possible to legislate upon many practical questions as to which it had teen impossible to do anything for the last few years. That statement had never been given as the motive for the Government propounding a scheme for the reform of Procedure, but had merely referred to the legislative facility that was anticipated when the change was made. The hon. and learned Gentleman had frankly stated that he was opposed to the clôture altogether, and his whole argument had been so directed. He had only supported the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin, upon the ground that it would restrict and minimize the effect of the clôture as applied to debates of that House. He would not follow the hon. and learned Gentleman into the Party attacks introduced into his speech, and he need do no more than echo the advice given by the Prime Minister, that the first duty of every Member of the House upon this subject was not to his Party, nor to the Government of his Party, but to the House itself—to its first traditions, and to its future usefulness and dignity. That had been his feeling in approaching the question. He had approached it, as he believed most hon. Members had, with à priori repugnance to adopt the notion and the expedients of the clôture; but he had been forced by conviction to accept the conclusion that, with the Amendments which the Government had now accepted, the clôture would not be open to the objections he had originally entertained to it, and that nothing less than their proposal would fulfil the common object of both sides of the House. He had been deeply impressed with the alarm of the Opposition with regard to the effect the clôture might have on future occupants of the Speaker's Chair. The right hon. and learned Gentleman who had moved the Amendment had said that the clôture would be certain to be abused, and that seemed to be a wide-spread impression. He was prepared to agree with that impression, with a reserve. It was true that a power once granted would be used, and that if freely and unrestrainedly used, it would be liable to be abused, and that therefore the clôture without a check would be liable to be abused. To his mind it was not so much a question of the clôture pure and simple as a question of checks upon the right of voting it. The Mover of the Amendment had said the Government proposal would be a gag and an outrage, and that the Opposition would be outlawed if it were carried into effect. The Government view was that it was not to put down Obstruction—it was, if it could be fairly done, to compress debate—it was the whole object of the clôture to compress debate. He would put it to the House whether, if they could secure fairness in the application of the clôture, compression of the debate might not be attained without the suppression of any view, however extreme? His belief was that compression of the debate might be so attained without the suppression of a single view or a single illustration, however extreme, and that what would be excluded would be undue repetition and prolixity. Thus the value and weight of the debate would be increased without detracting from its fairness. There were two proposals—one for the clôture by a bare majority, and the other by a two-thirds' majority. Both the Government and the Opposition were justified to a great extent in their views of the course they were adopting; but neither had kept sufficiently in view the rights of private Members, who were the pioneers of all improvements in legislation and of all reforms. Now, speaking as a private Member, he believed that the clôture, either by a bare or a two-thirds' majority, might have stopped many of the initiatory movements of private Members that had subsequently produced great results. He had always objected, and should continue to object, to the clôture by a bare majority, or by any majority if it were without check, and if a private Member, who by patience and persistence had obtained the occasion he desired to bring before the House and the country the convictions perhaps of a lifetime, or, it might be, to express the mandate of his constituents, was not allowed the reasonable hearing to which he was entitled, and which no majority had any right to deprive him of. It became a question, therefore, of what checks could be applied to the clôture to prevent such an abuse. The evident sense of the House would, more often than not, be against the private Member, and therefore that would be no check at all. It would be necessary, therefore, to find a check outside of majorities and minorities. Indeed, he believed that two-thirds would be worse than a bare majority, for if a bare majority of 1 were sufficient, yet the Speaker would not consider that a bare majority only ratified his action, but he would wait until he was sure of general support; on the other hand, with an artificial majority of two-thirds, the Speaker would have no scruple whatever in acting, but would feel impelled to close the debate as soon as a majority of the Members testified their desire for it. With the two-thirds' majority there would, therefore, be no check, and the rights of private Members would be absolutely disregarded. But there would come in the responsibility of the Speaker or Chairman if power was given him to decide whether fair opportunity had been given for debate. The Government had accepted the Amendment of the hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Storey), and now it would practically lie with the Speaker or the Chairman, as the case might be, to decide whether there had been a fair opportunity of debate. With a slight verbal alteration of the Resolution as thus amended, the Speaker or the Chairman could not mistake their duty never to allow the clôture unless they were of opinion that the subject had been fully and sufficiently discussed. The right hon. and learned Gentleman who had moved the Amendment had regarded the Speaker as the initiator of the clôture; but that was not the case. The House of Commons always had been able to manifest their opinion that the time had arrived for a debate to terminate, and it was only when similar indications were manifested in the future that the responsibility of the Speaker in the matter would arise. It was not true, therefore, that the responsibility of initiating the closure of a debate would belong to the Speaker; the true statement being that it belonged to the House, and that a veto on the opinion of the House would be lodged in the hands of the Speaker or Chairman of Committees. Indeed, it was inconceivable that any Speaker or Chairman of Committees would take the responsibility of declaring that a debate had been adequately discussed when the whole of the Opposition was of a contrary opinion and demanded the right of further expression of their views. But, as the Prime Minister had said, the power in debate should not be left in the hands of the Opposition. The power of putting an end to debate should be in the hands of the majority. The first duty of the Opposition was to secure full and fair discussion, but it was not any part of their duty to conduct Public Business. To give them absolute power would be to give them a power to which they had no right, and to make them responsible for that which was not their own. He believed that the placing of power in the hands of the Speaker and the majority would secure full and fair debate; and that the acceptance of the two-thirds' proposal would defeat their purpose of compression of the debates. With regard to the Speaker and Chairman of Committees, so far from fearing the result of these Rules, so far from fearing that they would be made the servants of the majority and not of the House, he believed the Rules would justly define and greatly strengthen their position as impartial Presidents of the debates and as exponents of the views of the collective House, and as the best protectors of the interests of minorities, however small.

LORD JOHN MANNERS

said, the question raised by the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) was one of the most delicate and difficult the House had ever had to consider. The right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had admitted that up to a recent period he had been opposed to the Government proposal, and he had pointed out that the so-called safeguard proposed by the Government was really no safeguard at all. The right hon. Gentleman, who spoke as the champion of private Members, had said that the object of the Rule was to compress debate; but how could debate be compressed, except where private Members were concerned? He said he spoke as a private Member. No doubt, he did in some sense; but he was a prominent Member of the House, with an official prefix to his name, and was not therefore, in the position of an ordinary private Member. The private Member who would be pressed out of the debate would not be a Gentleman like him who had occupied an official position in this House; but those private Members who had not yet made their mark on the Records of the House, but who were anxious to come forward and communicate the result of their cogitations for the benefit of hon. Members generally. The right hon. Gentleman had further said that he wished that the rights of private Members should be respected, and that he saw nothing in the proposal of the Government but what would protect them. If that was so, the Resolution would be a dead letter, because if every private Member who wished to speak had contributed his quota to their deliberations, what was the use of clôture? There would be nobody left who wanted to protract the debate. The fact was, that if the words were a real protection to private Members they were fatal to the clôture, and if the clôture was to be applied, then he maintained they would be fatal to private Members. The right hon. Gentleman said that the evident sense of the House would be brought to the notice of the Speaker by the established mode of making the wish of the House known—namely, by organized clamour, which had hitherto succeeded in stopping discussion at the proper time. But if the wish of the House could be made known by organized clamour, why was it necessary to make any change in the Rules of the House? He now turned to the speech of the head of the Government. The Prime Minister last night devoted a considerable portion of time to explain the reason why in August last he departed from the proposal he had made in May. It appeared to him that that explanation went a very little way indeed towards explaining the extreme vehemence with which the right hon. Gentleman denounced up hill and down dale the very proposal to which he had assented in May. If it were true, as was contended last night with such exuberant eloquence by the right hon. Gentleman, that the Amendment of his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for the University of Dublin would sacrifice the rights of those small minorities to which the right hon. Gentleman ascribed so much of the present freedom and prosperity of the country—if this Amendment would sacrifice, not only the rights of these small minorities, but the incontestable rights of the majority, and would be a fatal impediment to the progress of Business—how came it that in May the right hon. Gentleman himself proposed to accept it? What had happened in the interval to produce these wonderful changes in the views of the right hon. Gentleman? The only explanation he gave was that in May he was prepared to accept the Amendment in the hope that it might facilitate the passing of one, or possibly two, particular measures. [Mr. GLADSTONE: I said I would adopt it experimentally.] But if adopted at all it would become a Standing Order of the House. Everything was experimental. Did the right hon. Gentleman suppose that if this Rule were made a Standing Order it could be anything more than experimental? The Rule, though experimental, would have become a Standing Order. In May last, therefore, the right hon. Gentleman was prepared to risk all the odium, all the dangers, all the inconsistencies, and all the inconveniences which he enlarged upon at such length last night, in order to pass one or, at most, two measures. If they had charged the right hon. Gentleman with having been willing to sacrifice the potential rights of small minorities and the absolute rights of majorities and of Governments for the chance of facilitating the passage of one or two Government measures in a special Session of Parliament, with what in- dignation would that charge have been I repelled; and yet it was the right hon. Gentleman himself who brought that charge against himself, and who had convicted himself of inconceivable levity. That being the only justification suggested by the right hon. Gentleman for his extraordinary change of front, what were the allegations which his supporters had put forward in favour of clôture by bare majority and against the proposal of his right hon. Friend? They were of the most vague and general character. The hon. Member for North Northamptonshire (Mr. E. Spencer)—to whose graceful commencement of his career in that House he had listened with great pleasure—said that a disease which was eating out the life of the House required that tremendous operation, and the right hon. Gentleman cheered that statement. Was it true, in any real sense of the word, that since the month of May that great evil had developed itself? Because he must contend that by the action of the right hon. Gentleman himself they must look to the transactions that had occurred since May to justify the change in the position of the Government. Nothing that he knew of had occurred to justify it between May and August. They were, indeed, told generally that the last Session was a barren one. He demurred to that statement, it was not correct in fact; but, even if it were correct, he said that fault was not the fault of the long-suffering House of Commons, but directly that of Her Majesty's Government. The right hon. Gentleman opposite had the management of the Business of the House as its Leader. During the last Session they had the episode of Mr. Bradlaugh's attempting to take his seat. They were now referred to the evident sense of the House as a guide to the Speaker's conduct in applying the clôture. Was the right hon. Gentleman, the Leader of the House, ignorant of what was its evident sense as to the claim of Mr. Bradlaugh. The right hon. Gentleman completely lost touch of the House on that matter, and most valuable time was lost by his bungling and inefficient treatment of it. Again, in the middle of their discussions on those very Rules of Procedure the right hon. Gentleman thought fit to interpolate a totally unnecessary and unjustifiable attack on the House of Lords, and that involved the waste of a valuable fortnight in the most important period of the Session. Then the right hon. Gentleman turned round on the unfortunate House of Commons, and said—"You are afflicted with an almost incurable malady with which nothing but the knife can deal." He denied that altogether, and said that if the right hon. Gentleman would conduct the Business of the House in a different manner he would find that measures of importance would be satisfactorily discussed and disposed of. Gentlemen opposite, in arguing that question, omitted altogether those two important Irish measures, on which, no doubt, last Session a considerable time was employed. He did not enter now into their merits; but no one could deny that they were very large measures bristling with points of contention from beginning to end. Those measures were discussed at some length, but not at a length that could be justly complained of, and they became law. Were there no other measures passed? He called into Court the Liberal Member for the County of Worcester (Mr. Hastings), who was President of the Social Science Association, and who, in a recent speech, characterized two of the measures passed last Session as being of the very greatest importance, especially pointing out that one of them contained the most beneficent and wise provisions embodied in any measure affecting the land of the United Kingdom that had become law for 300 years. Did those Bills meet with anything like factious Obstruction? Both the Settled Estates Bill and the Married Women's Property Bill were discussed in the calmest manner, and received the general approbation of both Bides of the House. Again, when the dawdling and bungling policy of the Government had landed them in a war, which was not a war, with Egypt, and the Government had to ask late in the Session for an additional 1½d. on the Income Tax, did any section of the House manifest any Obstruction, or evince a disposition to contest that unsatisfactory demand in any way not justified by precedent and fair play? Nothing of the kind. He ventured to say that no set of sheep ever remained more quiet and dumb before their shearers than the House of Commons under that proposal to increase the Income Tax. He denied, then, that in the last Session —the only one which they could allow to influence their discussion—there was any justification for that tremendous drastic remedy. But would the right hon. Gentleman go back and say that for some years past that malady had been noticed and called for the application of that remedy? Why, up to 1880 they had the hon. Gentleman's own written statements that no such case had arisen, and they had his vindication of what some of them might have thought the unduly protracted character of their debates. Up to 1880 the right hon. Gentleman was unconscious of any justification for the clôture. In the first Session of the right hon. Gentleman's Government he passed every measure which he chose to introduce, including that most unnecessary, and, if uncessary, then unjustifiable, one, according to his own showing—the Supplementary Budget, by which an extra 1d. was, without any just cause, added to the Income Tax. In the next Session, no doubt, a limited section of the House offered considerable opposition to a measure which the Government and the right hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) thought essential to the preservation of life and property in Ireland. But that was the isolated opposition of an individual section of the House, and could be far more properly dealt with under the head of Obstruction, which they were told by the right hon. Gentleman had nothing whatever to do with that proposal of the clôture. Therefore he denied, speaking broadly, that a general case of gross incapacity and in-competency on the part of the House had been made out. He admitted that under happier auspices and better arrangements last Session, or the Session before, an additional measure or two might have been passed; but he denied that any justification had been established for that great and drastic innovation on the freedom of debate which they had heretofore enjoyed. He came now to the objections taken by the right hon. Gentleman to the Amendment of his right hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Gibson). The right hon. and learned Gentleman complained that it was a great and signal innovation on all the constituted traditions and regulations of the House—that a proportionate and artificial majority was an innovation. Well, was it? Did the right hon. Gentleman him- self abstain last year from asking the House to vote Urgency by a proportionate majority? He thought not. Then, what became of his allegation that the proposal of his right hon. and learned Friend was a thing unheard of in Parliamentary history? It was no such thing. But, if it was an innovation, in what respect was it more an innovation than the Resolution of the right hon. Gentleman? How did the right hon. Gentleman get at his figures of 100 and 200? What precedent would he find to establish the fact that those arithmetical puzzles of his own were not an innovation on the House's Forms of Procedure, and that the arithmetical proposal of his right hon. and learned Friend was an innovation that must be resisted to the death? He could not understand why the right hon. Gentleman had pitched upon the number 200. On one side of that number every safeguard was to be accorded to minorities; on the other, none at all were to be given. Why was this? What precedent of the least weight could the right hon. Gentleman assign for this singular demarcation by the imaginary boundary of the figure 200, and what argument could possibly be advanced in its support? He contended that the Amendment of his right hon. and learned Friend, so far from being inconsistent with the Resolution of the Government, was, in fact, an almost necessary complement to it. It accepted the scheme of the Resolution, giving protection, against the clôture according to numbers, and might, therefore, be regarded as being really and truly a touchstone of the sincerity of the declarations of the Government and their supporters on the Ministerial side of the House. What, according to the right hon. Gentleman, was the object of the Resolution? He did not say last night, whatever might have been said on a previous occasion by the Secretary of State for India, that the intention of the Government was to gag and muzzle Her Majesty's Opposition; on the contrary, the right hon. Gentleman had said his object was that the evident sense of the House should be gathered, not from one side, but from both sides; and the right hon. Gentleman, to give force to his statement, went on to say that he assumed what might happen would be this—when a debate had been formally termi- nated by the speech of the Prime Minister on the one side, and that of the Leader of the Opposition on the other, and when it had been arranged on both sides that the debate should close, some fussy private Member would rise between 1 and 2 in the morning, and, against the evident sense of the House, insist upon being heard. The object the Government had in view—said the right hon. Gentleman—was to meet that State of things by the absolute clôture, because Members of the Government on the one side, and the Leaders of the Opposition on the other, would be so much indisposed to show themselves opposed to the pretentions of the individual Member who was breaking through the understanding come to between the two sides of the House that they would not wish to appear in the Division Lobby in favour of the clôture. That was a most extraordinary argument. Was it not notorious that against Gentlemen who rose to prolong debates at unearthly hours the House knew perfectly well how to protect itself? If the right hon. Gentleman really thought that that was not so, let the clôture be applied, as he was about to propose, under the protection of the ballot, so that nervous and timorous Leaders on both sides might end a debate when they thought fit, and so protect themselves and the House against the pretensions of the intrusive private Member. That, however, with all respect for the Prime Minister, could not be the only object of the Government in proposing this absolute clôture, and the observations of the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, coupled with what had formerly been said by the Secretary of State for India, sufficed to convince him that other and further designs were to be accomplished by the Government proposal. And, foreseeing those designs, and knowing what they were, the Opposition was naturally resolved to resist, and, if possible, to defeat them. If the clôture were established in the form proposed by the Government, and if, as was undoubtedly intended, it were used on great Party questions, several results, which had been well pourtrayed by various speakers, would inevitably follow. In the first place, the position and influence of the House of Lords would be much enhanced; and that would not be an unmixed evil, though, as it could only follow a diminution of the respect in which the House of Commons had hitherto been held, he should deeply deplore it. When Astræa was banished from this sublunary sphere, she took refuge in the higher regions; and he could not doubt that when freedom of debate had fled from the House of Commons, it would seek a safe asylum in the other Chamber. The other inconvenience which he foresaw was unquestionably an unmixed evil, and was nothing less than the instability of all the legislative efforts of the House. With the conviction once established that great changes had been accomplished without the full and free discussion to which they had hitherto been subjected, there would be endless attempts to change recent legislation, and a state of constant and violent fluctuation would be produced which it had hitherto been the pride and safeguard of the country to avoid. Such would be the all but certain results of clôture by a bare majority. The pathetic and eloquent speech of the Prime Minister on Tuesday night contained a passage of a prophetic character, to the effect that this was one of his last official attempts to guide the destinies of this country. For his own part, he should deeply regret that the right hon. Gentleman, by his action towards the close of his illustrious and brilliant career, should have done anything to shake the confidence of the House and the country in the impartiality of those who presided over the debates, and should have rendered it impossible in the future for the Opposition and the Government to share the joint responsibility which they had hitherto borne for the fullness, the fairness, and the dignity of the debates and of the proceedings of the House of Commons.

LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE

said, he thought that the criticisms and reproaches used against the Government did not beseem the lips of hon. Members opposite. He was sorry that the noble Lord opposite (Lord John Manners) had helped the House out of none of its difficulties. Yesterday, at 5 o'clock, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) and the Leader of the Opposition (Sir Stafford North-cote) had come down to the House, like Herod and Drusilla, with much pomp and ceremony, to initiate the discussion, and to announce, as they practically had done, that, if they did not die on the floor of the House in defence of its liberties, the occasion was one of the gravest in the history of the country, and that no one who loved the Constitution would refuse to follow their lead, but that they should separate themselves from their friends and support the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. About an hour later he read in the November number of The Fortnightly Review certain reflections on the position of the Party opposite in regard to the question of the clôture. The articles which he read—or rather, the article, for they were virtually two compressed into one, was reputed to be the work of a retired diplomatist, a discontented lawyer, and a Scotch metaphysician, under the political editorship of a noble Lord who, he supposed, aspired to play the part of literary patron, as it was played in the last century to Wilkes by the eminent owner of the historical house of Stowe. In those articles, he found that he was expressly warned against the blandishments of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin, who was denounced in them as a lawyer and an Irishman of Irishmen; and the writer proceeded to say— Mr. Gibson, with all his ability, labours under one great disadvantage. He is Member for the University of Dublin, and, consequently, is necessarily in no greater communication or sympathy with English, or even with Irish popular constituencies, than if he were a Member of the House of Keys or the States of Jersey. He (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) was in hopes the noble Lord opposite (Lord John Manners) would have taken the trouble to have told them something which would have helped them out of the difficulty they were now experiencing, by explaining under which King the Opposition were to range themselves—who were the safe guides—which were the true views, those put forward from the Front Opposition Bench, or those put forward officiously by others; but the noble Lord did not attempt to remove the ambiguity.

LORD JOHN MANNERS

I have not seen the article to which the noble Lord alludes.

LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE

said, he could assure the noble Lord and all scholars, that they would find it very instructive and entertaining reading indeed, and the noble Lord's Colleagues would also find it instructive. The speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Gibson), if it did not show that he was as well acquainted with that House, as with the House of Keys, or the States of Jersey, it was nevertheless interspersed with points which seemed to overstrain the argument, and which were contradictory one of the other. With regard to the safeguards in the Resolution of the Government, they had been introduced out of deference to the ruling of the Speaker. Admitting that there might be circumstances in which it would be difficult to determine what was the "evident sense of the House," and further, admitting the possibility that the decision of the Chair might be overruled, it was infinitely more probable that, if the House were to decide by a majority of two-thirds, there might be circumstances in which the decision of the Chair would be overruled. If the risk was a possible one in one case, it was a probable one in the other. The best part of the Resolution was the safeguards. Personally, he (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) would be perfectly willing to accept the clôture, as it was called, by a bare majority, without those safeguards; but, as they had been put in to meet the criticisms which had been brought forward, he should vote for them. What, however, he did not understand was why hon. Members opposite, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman in particular, should be so tremendously anxious to drive a coach - and - four through those safeguards, which went in the direction of the Amendment, and had been inserted in the Resolution to meet the sort of views which hon. Gentlemen opposite were supposed to hold. He felt perfectly certain that, if the Prime Minister had chosen any other set of figures, there would have been a bundle of objections to them on the part of the Opposition, just as there was to the figures he had introduced. It might just as well be asked why a quorum was not 39 or 41 instead of 40. Looking at the question from a common-sense point of view, he should say that a House where 200 Members voted for the clôture was, to borrow the phrase of the Prime Minister, "a full House," and a House in a position and in the capacity to exercise the rights of the whole House, and saying that the debate should terminate. The arguments of hon. Members opposite all turned in this direction. It was absurd to say that the question had been under discussion 10 months; but that was nothing to the exaggeration under which the House was told it must look forward to the fact that, in the future, they would have a Speaker they could not trust; that the Minister would be tyrannical and despotic; and that he would be supported by a servile majority; and the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth (Mr. Edward Clarke) drew a picture of the "horrible danger" in which the Parliamentary institutions of the country would be placed if the Resolution were passed. A year hence such opinions would surprise those who had uttered them. He (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) was convinced that if that great man who passed away last year now sat as Leader of the Opposition he would have been the last to have used the argument they had heard used, because it amounted to this—that the more popular institutions were extended the more was the House degraded, and it would have found no favour with the author of the Representation of the People Act. That contention argued an absolute want of sympathy and of trust in the future of England which he (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) entirely rejected, and which he believed was hardly shared by a single person on the Liberal side. Whatever his faults or his virtues, one thing at least distinguished Lord Beaconsfield, and that was his great trust in the people and in that House which represented the people. But he (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) believed that these unworthy exaggerations on the part of hon. Members opposite, raised in the turmoil of debate, and becoming defined by frequent repetition, would pass away with the adoption of the Resolution, as adopted it would be, and when the moment for calmer consideration arrived. Hon. Members would revert to the present nobler and purer principles of Lord Beaconsfield—a trust in and sympathy with the people of this country—and they would cease to talk about a dishonest Speaker and a servile House, arguments which nobody in his calmer moments could believe, unless, indeed, it happened to be the hon. and learned Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton). Taking this into consideration, they had, therefore, a right to ask hon. Members opposite to reconsider their position. Did they really believe that this Rule of closure would bring about the overthrow of Parliamentary-institutions? The House was told that the Conservative Party wished to restore the dignity of the House, and to put down Obstruction as much as the Liberal Party. But if they desired the end, they must desire the means; and it was difficult to find out what they wanted, for when a means was proposed to that end the Opposition overwhelmed them with floods of criticism. There was the expressed opinion of the Leader of the Opposition as to a two-thirds' majority. Was the right hon. Gentleman still of the same opinion? And, if not, why had he changed his opinions? The hon. and learned Member for Plymouth (Mr. Edward Clarke), after dwelling on the "horrible" danger of the elôture, said—"Oh, your Prime Minister has in preparation a terrible bundle of revolutionary measures." He (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) and all the other supporters of the Ministry were perfectly prepared to answer the challenge conveyed in that inuendo. He was glad to know that the hon. and learned Member had been taken into a confidence which had not been vouchsafed to the Members of the Liberal Party. But what were those measures, and what was the fact? The fact was, the measures most blocked and obstructed this year were all useful Business measures, upon which it was hard to raise Party spirit, and which were delayed and frustrated by repeated and prolix talk. Who could say that the Government proposals of this Session were revolutionary?—the reform of the Government of the City, County Government, Consolidation of the Law, Bankruptcy, Floods. He should have thought that such subjects would have especially appealed to the Party opposite and the great agricultural interests. Were these the measures devised in the dark and hidden counsels of the Prime Minister? It was difficult to speak seriously of such a style of argument. The noble Lord (Lord John Manners) had told them that there had been plenty of legislation passed by the House to prove that the proposals now being made were not wanted, and he instanced the Settled Estates Bill and the Married Women's Property Act. It was notorious that these measures were not discussed at all. The first was allowed to go quietly through the House by a wise conspiracy of silence at about 2.30 a.m. Hardly a word was said as to the second, and it was only just saved from an untimely fate at the end of the Session, it having been blocked by the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar). It was then alleged that the freedom of discussion would be prevented by organized clamour, and, with respect to that point, he did not agree with the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth. Of his own knowledge, he could say that the present House was much more tolerant with regard to hearing Members than the un-reformed House. Members then yielded when it was found that both sides of the House were shouting at them; but when 20 or 30 Members, desirous of being looked upon as patriots in their own country, combined to consider it a glory and not a shame to be thus treated, that form of closure became impossible, for there were no available means of reducing such Members to obedience in accordance with the wishes of the House; and the present Resolutions became necessary, and were the result of deliberations instituted to find a remedy. It was because the present Rules had hopelessly broken down that it was necessary to pass these New Rules. Legislation was at a deadlock. If, then, they desired the end, they must possess the means. He did not believe the closure would be often used; but, like the law, which often prevented the commission of crimes which would otherwise be committed, the fact of its existence would diminish the necessity for its use. He believed that the Prime Minister, in proposing the closure, was actuated only by the highest purposes and purest desires; and he believed the whole Ministerial Party was singularly united on the question. He had read excited statements from London correspondents of Provincial newspapers about the moderate Liberals, or Whigs, as they were called, differing in opinion from the rest of the Party. Speaking for himself, and for what, he believed, was the opinion of many of his personal acquaintances, he was firmly convinced that, if there were, or had been, one body of men more strongly united in the wish to see this Resolution of a bare majority carried, it was that section of the House. The moderate Liberals were, above all things, a Party of good government and of order. The disorder which existed in the House, whether it came from some old-fashioned Tories, or from a section of the Irish Members, proceeded from that kind of anarchy which, above all things, was most abhorrent to the mind of a moderate Liberal. The cause of liberty was inseparably connected with the cause of order; to destroy the one was to strike a fatal blow at the other. If the Opposition fancied, from these absurd stories and calumnies on the moderate Liberals, that there was the smallest chance of their obtaining any co-operation or assistance in turning out the Prime Minister upon this question, they were calculating without their host, and they had made one more mistake in that long and melancholy string of blunders, so clearly and forcibly set forth to the country in the November number of The Fortnightly Review, which was reputed, as he said before, to be the joint production of a noble Lord—a retired diplomatist, a disappointed lawyer, and a Scotch metaphysician. He had seen articles in The Standard, day after day, in which the writer asked—"What will the Prime Minister do?" That question was repeated in tones of despair, as if nobody could answer it. He (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) ventured to reply to it. The Prime Minister would carry this Resolution. He would carry it against the wishes of hon. Members opposite, but with the united support of the whole of his own Party, and with the goodwill and approval of every lover of order and liberty in this great and historic land.

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL

said, he thought the speech of the noble Lord who had just sat down (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) had probably reminded the House and Her Majesty's Ministers of the necessity of before long filling up the vacant places in the Cabinet, and of the existence of the noble Lord. It was said that there was joy over a sinner that repenteth; but he (Lord Randolph Churchill) failed to notice any ecstacy in the ranks of the Liberal Party at the promise of the noble Lord to support the Government on this Resolution. The noble Lord appeared unable to address the House without previously studying the monthly magazines; but, on the present occasion, he (Lord Randolph Churchill) could not help thinking that the noble Lord would have done much better if he had addressed himself to the subject before the House rather than to some article which he said he had read in The Fortnightly Review. It occurred to him (Lord Randolph Churchill) that possibly the noble Lord was interested in the success of that new enterprize, and took this opportunity of advertising it. As he was told that that was a very silly and acrimonious article, he thought it was very probably the work of some spiteful Whig—possibly, even of the noble Lord himself. He here parted company with the noble Lord, and would go on to observe that he thought the House ought to recognize, in a very marked manner, the generosity of the Prime Minister, who, having satisfied himself, through the instrumentality of the noble Lord the Member for Flint-shire (Lord Richard Grosvenor), that, without doubt, he possessed the command of a substantial majority, in having informed the House that it was no question of want of confidence in the Government, that all pressure was relaxed, and that every Member might speak and vote as he pleased; and, as he was now assured that there was no fear of a Ministerial crisis through the action of any private Member, he would like to ask the House to give him its attention for a few moments while he addressed himself to the Amendment. What struck him most in the remarkable speech of the Prime Minister was the vivid picture which he drew, with prophetic eye, of the race of Speakers of that House of the future. It appeared that they had been entirely under a mistake in supposing that there was to be any deterioration in the holders of the Chair. On the contrary, they were to go on in a course of development more marvellous than any that was ever dreamed of by the late Professor Darwin. The Speakers of the future were to be so impartial as to be removed far above all human frailty, and to be endowed with instincts far superior to any that had been acquired by the entire animal creation. They were to be able to discover, on particular occasions, that certain Members were very willing, and, indeed, desperately anxious, to vote for the closing of a debate, and that certain other Members were anxious that the debate should not be closed—and to discover it with but the slightest expression of opinion from anyone. It appeared to him, if that was the case, that the House would be treated nightly to a very interesting exhibition of what was called "thought reading" from the Chair, and, so far as he could make out from the speech of the Prime Minister, without any extra charge. It appeared, indeed, that the moment this Resolution passed, the Speaker would be endowed with an amount of personal infallibility far beyond anything that had ever been claimed by His Holiness the Pope. When he heard the whole of that remarkable prophecy, he must confess that he was, for once, as nearly as ever he was in his life, thrown off his balance, and was almost persuaded not only to support the clôture, that was going to produce such marvellous improvements in the race of Speakers, but to denounce any individual who would continue his resistance to it. But a most providential intervention occurred, and he subsequently began to doubt as to whether the Government had their eye upon such a remarkable individual as the Prime Minister had pourtrayed, and he decided that he would do wisely in adhering to his former opinions, which were also those of a Gentleman whom he respected most highly and followed, as to this 1st Resolution, and he would accordingly vote for the Motion of his right hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote) against it, when it was put from the Chair; and he looked forward with great pleasure to following the lead of his right hon. Friend. He had, however, so much respect for the genius and ability of his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for the Dublin University (Mr. Gibson), that he did not like to take a course opposed to anything he might suggest without endeavouring to explain the reason why. He therefore wished to state why he could not support the Amendment of his right hon. and learned Friend. The question before the House was not whether they were to have the clôture, but whether the clôture was to be affirmed by a two-thirds' majority, or by a majority of 1. Now, the clôture had been called an innovation of a foreign practice; but it appeared to him (Lord Randolph Churchill) that a proportionate majority, or what was called a two-thirds' clôture, was a very much greater innovation on all our principles, ideas, and customs, than even the clôture itself. He knew of nothing in the history of this country, or in its laws, or in its Constitution, which could be adduced as a precedent or an analogy for the course proposed in the Amendment—that the House should require two-thirds of its Members to affirm any proposition. After all, the principle of the clôture was not an innovation. The Motion of the Previous Question was a form of clôture, only it admitted of debate; while the proposal of the Prime Minister did not. In America the clôture was called the Previous Question, and was used without debate. But he never heard that it was suggested by anyone that the Previous Question should require a majority of two-thirds, in order that it should be carried. They did not require proportionate majorities for the election of their Representatives, nor would any proposition to that effect have the slightest chance of being accepted by the country. London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Glasgow, could return Members to that House for a period of seven years by majorities of 1, and the Member so returned was as fully and as firmly the Member for that constituency as if he had been elected unanimously; and he thought that the election of a Member for a great constituency for a period of seven years was a much more important matter, and would seem to require a much stronger title than the closing of an occasional debate in the House of Commons. They knew, moreover, as the Prime Minister told them, that many of the greatest reforms in their laws had been carried by majorities which did not number double figures; and it was undoubtedly, in theory, in the power of Parliament, by a majority of 1, to change the Constitution of the country from a Monarchy into a Republic, which, again, he should say, would be a much more important matter than the closing of an occasional debate. He owned he was a firm believer in the general infallibility of simple majorities; they had practically governed the British Empire from time immemorial, and he could not refrain from expressing his surprise that the Tory Party or the Constitutional Party, which naturally and properly recoiled with such horror from this Radical innovation of the clôture, should put forward with eagerness, with anxiety, and almost with desperation, this much greater Radical innovation of the two-thirds' majority. That was his general objection to this Amendment; but he would like to look at it in practice. However objectionable the clôture by a bare majority was, it was perfectly clear to him that it would probably be used against all Parties in that House, without distinction or favour; but he was perfectly certain that, to all intents and purposes, a two-thirds' clôture would be used against the Irish Party alone. Now, he could not imagine anything more deplorable, more full of evil and disaster, than the continual recurrence of the spectacle of the two great Parties in the State uniting, and uniting only, for the purpose of suppressing the Irish Members. He defied anyone to conjecture any method more certainly or more infallibly calculated to produce not only perhaps an Irish Parliament, but perhaps even Irish independence. Irish opposition to English Governments in the House of Commons, even if it were obstinate, even if obstructive, even if it were calculated at the time to bring the Legislature into contempt, might be an evil; but it was an evil which must be borne with more or less, unless they were prepared, sooner or later, to concede fully and freely to the demand for Home Rule. They might suppress this Irish opposition by new and strange devices, they might practically or actually disfranchise Ireland, they might govern the country by the bayonet; but these proceedings could only endure for a limited period, and at the end of them would be Repeal of the Union. He said this—that outside these two alternatives of allowing full, free, even exaggerated expression of Irish grievances in that Parliament, and the Repeal of the Union, he could see no choice. They were endeavouring to govern Ireland behind the former alternative; but if they adopted this insidious two-thirds' clôture, which, curiously enough, they should notice was recommended to them for acceptance by an Irishman belonging to what had hitherto been the dominant Party, he felt sure, as certainly as they were all sitting there, no matter what efforts anyone might make, they would have to abandon the former alternative and adopt the latter. If this clôture were brought into operation, there would be an understanding between the two Front Benches; and when he contemplated the two Front Benches, he rose to a height of impartiality which was perfectly sublime. There would be an understanding between those two Front Benches that this clôture was to be used against the Irish Party, but not against any other Party in the House. The weapon would be too easy of use, the temptation too strong, the hatred of race too recent, to prevent any Government, were it Liberal or were it Conservative, from continually having recourse to it for the purpose of advancing their own Business, or English or Scotch claims. The predictions as to the tyranny of a majority, the predictions as to the degradation of the Chair, of which they had heard so much, he looked upon as chimerical and unreal compared with that one certain consequence of the adoption by the House of that Amendment—namely, that it would be mainly used to stifle the expression of Irish national feeling in that House; and he believed the result would, to use the words of Lord Beaconsfield, be "more fatal to the unity of the Empire than famine, pestilence, or foreign conquest." He desired to say one word more as to the probable working effects of this Amendment upon the future fortunes of the Tory Party whether in Office or out of Office. He imagined that many of those who supported this Amendment were animated by a secret conviction that the palmy days of Tory Governments were over, and that the Tory Party had nothing to do but look forward to a long period of endless Opposition, perhaps occasionally chequered by partial glimpses of Office with a minority. For himself, he believed that to be not only incorrect, but abjectly incorrect. That it was, however, held by many he had no doubt, and those who held it were endeavouring by this Amendment to construct, as it were, a little dyke under which they imagined they would be able to shelter themselves for a long time to come. A more hopeless delusion never before led astray a political Party, and he would endeavour, in the words of the Prime Minister, to "smash, destroy, and pulverize it." How many times did anyone in that House think the Prime Minister would—and he (Lord Randolph Churchill) looked upon the Prime Mi- nister as an extremely moderate statesman compared with the statesmen the Liberal Party was likely to produce very soon—how many times would the Prime Minister permit the Tory Party to refuse him the two-thirds' majority which would enable him to get his Budget Resolutions? On a generous calculation, he might stand it twice or possibly three times; but, as sure as the right hon. Gentleman sat where he did, after the third time he would come down and say that the state of Public Business was deplorable, that the Session was one of discomfort and disaster, and within three weeks of that declaration the precious little dyke which was to shelter the Tory Party for a long time to come, this little exotic, which was to be so carefully introduced, nurtured, and protected, so that the Tory Party might repose under its shade, would be abolished, cut down, and swept away into the great dust-bin of all modern Constitutional checks and securities. The best protection, the best Constitutional check against a Liberal Minister, which the Torty Party could look to was to be found in the House of Lords; yet how often would the House of Lords, with all its centuries of prescription, and all its vast territorial influence, venture to stand in the way of a Liberal majority? And yet with that historic caution, not to say timidity, on the part of the House of Lords and in their minds and before their eyes, did anyone really and seriously imagine that that wretched device, that miserable safeguard of a two-thirds' majority, could for one moment, or even for the suspicion of a moment, arrest the tide of popular reform, a safeguard compared with which Don Quixote's helmet was a miracle of protection, or Mrs. Partington's mop a monster of energy and strength? So much for the effect of a two-thirds' majority on the Tory Party in Opposition. Now let them look at its effect on the Tory Party in power. There could be no doubt that the Tory Party in power was confronted by a greater intensity of political animosity than was the Liberal Party under similar circumstances; and the Liberals in Opposition had recourse to methods of damaging and weakening a Tory Government which the Tories in Opposition had not either the courage or, indeed, the inclination to use. The result was that, when the Liberal Party were in power, there was always a larger in- fluential portion of the Tory Party willing, under ordinary circumstances, to concede to a Liberal Executive a certain amount of support, which would be of the greatest assistance to such a Government for getting through its ordinary Business. But when the Tories were in power there was no corresponding portion of the Liberal Party to whom they could look. How many times, he should like to ask the right hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote), when he was speaking in the country on the lamentable failures of the Session during the last Parliament, would it have been possible for him to obtain the necessary two-thirds, in order to enable him to get on with the Business of the country? He (Lord Randolph Churchill) was inclined to think, perhaps, twice; and yet he ventured to say that, in the present Parliament, there was scarcely a Vote of Supply, scarcely an Amendment in Committee, scarcely an imaginable Bill, as to which a considerable section of the Tory Party would not be ready, after a reasonable time, to give the Government the necessary two-thirds' majority for closing debate. He passed no opinion upon that; he simply stated it as a fact; and the result of all these arguments of his was, that when the Liberals were in power, they would constantly obtain the two-thirds, and that when the Tories were in power, they would never, or, to use the words of a popular song, "hardly ever." "Well, that did not seem to him a good reason why the Tory Party should so eagerly support that Amendment. Let them look a little further ahead. No one would deny that there were great and burning questions rapidly coming up for settlement—questions relating to the franchise and the representation of the people, questions relating to revenue and trade, questions relating to agriculture and land, and questions relating to the connection between Great Britain and Ireland. Were his right hon. Friends prepared, were they determined to abdicate and renounce all title to share in the origination of legislation on those great questions? Was the great Tory democracy which Lord Beaconsfield partly constructed, that was formed in 1874—was the attitude of that Tory democracy to be one of mere dogged opposition? Was it true, as their opponents said of them, that a Coercion Bill for Ireland and foreign war was the be-all and the end-all of a Tory minority? He would say, "Certainly not." And yet it was on the ability, and not only on the ability, but on the rapidity with which, in the face of an unscrupulous Opposition, they might be able to legislate on these questions that their title to power and tenure of Office would mainly depend. Nevertheless, here they were, under the influence of a Hibernian legal mind, elaborately and laboriously endeavouring to forge for themselves an instrument which, if they did come into power, would paralyze them so effectually and so terrifically that their power would be as tottering as a house of cards, and their tenure of Office as evanescent as a summer day. Of this he was perfectly certain—that if the Prime Minister was to concede to them the two-thirds' majority, and if, by any chance, the Tory Party were to come into power to-morrow, and were to be confronted by a strong and enterprizing Radical Party, and a strong and reckless Irish Party, and receiving no support from the Whig faction, they would find themselves utterly unable to make any progress with Business, or to cut any respectable figure before the country. They would bitterly curse the day—nay more, they would bitterly curse the Leaders, when, and by whom, they had been betrayed into such a hopeless and ruinous fix. Let them oppose this clôture with their whole power—let them defeat it if they could; let them resort, if they had the courage, to all those powers and privileges which a Parliamentary minority still possessed, in order, if possible, to compel the Prime Minister to abandon his scheme, or to appeal to the country, to which he and they were responsible, to decide between them. But, whatever they did, let them not, for Heaven's sake, be seduced by interested counsels into following foreign fancies, and let them not be persuaded by any desire to think only of the present, and to disembarrass themselves of all thought of what was to come, to damage or abandon that great trust which the past, the present, and the future of a great Party alike commanded them vigilantly to secure. For all these reasons, and with the instinct and the full conviction that the two-thirds' clôture, or any like proportionate majority, would be the most poisonous and deadly weapon against the life and efficiency of a future Tory Government which its most ingenious enemies could, by any possibility, devise, he greatly regretted that, under the circumstances, he should not be able to record his vote in favour of the Amendment of his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for the University of Dublin.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, he had kept his eyes upon the Front Opposition Bench during the speech of the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) in order to see whether any right hon. Gentleman was likely to rise and reply to his arguments. But there only remained half-an-hour before the time for the adjournment of the debate, and he could well understand they thought this would be too short a time in which to attempt to disprove the convincing arguments which had just been addressed to the House. The speech of the noble Lord appeared to him (Mr. Goschen) to strike at the root of the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dublin University (Mr. Gibson). The point of the noble Lord was that, under the two-thirds' proposal, no clôture could take place without negotiations between the two sides of the House. He (Mr. Goschen) shared the objections to such negotiations, while he felt sure that the Amendment would certainly make them indispensable. He hoped to be able to show that it would be in the power of even a very small minority to resist the evident sense of the House, and to prevent effect being given to the wishes of the majority, even when that majority would naturally comprise a portion of the regular Opposition. That was the danger to which they must not be blind. But he might first express his satisfaction that the noble Lord did not indulge in that persistent libel on the Parliamentary position of the country which had been indulged in by so many Conservatives, and which it was almost painful to listen to. The majority were to be imbued by virulent Party spirit; there was to be a Speaker tyrannical in conduct, and wanting in that impartiality which had always characterized his Office. But he would refuse to assume either that the majority would be always desirous of stifling the minority, while the minority would always be willing to lend its assistance to the progress of Public Business. If you assumed Party spirit on one side, you must also assume it on the other. The noble Lord the Member for Calne (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) had commented on the exaggerated fears expressed by hon. Members with great force. They had heard fears expressed that discussion was to be stifled, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dublin University had said that there was to be an outlawry of the Opposition. Had they considered that, if discussion were stifled on their side, it would be equally impossible for the majority to take part in the discussion? and whether it was probable that the Liberal Party would consent to impose silence on themselves? It would require a large amount of credulity to suppose that the majority would allow themselves to be condemned to silence, or that the Liberal Party would consent to that House being made a mere machine for registering votes, and passing Acts of Parliament. He was satisfied that that would not be allowed by the country. The right hon. and learned Member for Dublin University had said that that House was the great inquest of the nation; that it not only voted money, but discussed and inquired into grievances. Everyone would admit that description of the right hon. and learned Gentleman; but he (Mr. Goschen) was convinced that the adoption of the Resolutions of the Government would promote the proper debating of the most important subjects, and that the result would be the improvement of their debates, and not the stifling of discussion. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had pointed out that foreign nations would say that now the House of Commons was going to give up its freedom of debate. But what were foreign nations, and, what was much more to the point, what was the English nation, saying of the position in which the Parliament of this country had found itself? What was the use of maintaining that old privilege if it was so abused that they could not do the work which they were sent by their constituents to do in this House? It was in order to restore the efficiency of the House of Commons, to do their duty to their constituents, to enable the various classes of Members to take an equal part in discussion, and to secure a more equally distributed debate, both as regarded subjects and as regarded classes of Members who took part in these discussions, that they wished to support, and did heartily support, the Resolutions of Her Majesty's Government. He, for one, would not support the Government on a question of that kind if he thought they were going to suppress that which had been the pride of Parliament for ages. But the point was this—thathon. Members opposite, while they had these great fears for the future, would not realize, and they appeared to him not to have realized, the real and actual evils of the past. The noble Lord the Member for North Leicestershire (Lord John Manners) spoke as if he had nothing to complain of—as if Parliament had been in a satisfactory position the last few years. If the country thought so, it was quite natural they should remain satisfied; but he (Mr. Goschen) believed the country was convinced that that was not so, but that Resolutions were necessary for dealing with the existing evil. The alarms of hon. Members opposite, he thought, touched both the present and the future. They were afraid for the immediate present that certain dark designs were to be carried out, and they were also afraid for the future. To put those fears into words, their case was this—they seemed to feel that there had been an increased volume of Democratic movement. They seemed to fear that the Parliament of the future—the immediate future, one would almost think—would be different from the present House of Commons; that it would abandon the traditions of the past, and that—why he was at a loss to conceive, but for some reason or other—there was going to be a kind of fierce Party spirit, which was going to suppress the minority on every possible occasion. Well, that might be their belief; but he would ask, in the words of the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock, did they think a fierce Parliament of that kind was going to be prevented from carrying out its designs; did they think that a Parliament, inspired with a spirit of that kind, would be controlled by a Resolution passed that day as a Standing Order of the House? Was it that this two-thirds' Amendment was going to check the Democracy of the future? Did they believe that that safeguard would not be swept away by the advancing tide? It would be swept away at once, and if any reliance had been placed on its efficiency, its efficiency would be nought. But if that spirit was likely to develop itself, there was one remedy, and one only, upon which he would rely, and that was, before that time so to raise once more the character and dignity of the House, that the House itself would be the dyke and bulwark against the dangers hon. Members opposite feared. If those hon. Gentlemen ever read the newspapers, they would find that during the last few years the country had been dissatisfied with the want of business-like capacity in Parliament. If that feeling existed outside the House, what was the result? It was that organizations had sprung up to put pressure upon Parliament and to hasten their proceeding's. They had heard, also, that the Press claimed, if not to have superseded the influence of Parliament, at any rate to have equalled it. That was because the debates of Parliament had not been conducted within the last three or four years with such efficiency—owing to the tyranny of the few—as to meet the approbation of the country at large. The House had suffered from the tyranny of the few, and it was the unbounded licence in which the few had indulged which had imposed the clôture upon many Members of the moderate section, and had prevented them from giving expression to their feelings and opinions. With reference to the two-thirds' majority, he would point out to the House how the clôture would work if it could not be voted without a majority of two-thirds. There were many occasions on which it would not be possible to obtain that large majority, even if a large proportion of hon. Members in Opposition were prepared to grant it. The noble Lord the Member for Woodstock had argued that responsibility would fall upon the Leaders of the Opposition. What would happen? After a three nights' debate those Opposition Leaders would be approached and asked whether they would support the Government in closing the debate. The Leader of the Opposition would have to ask himself what would be his position if he supported the Government. If he did so, he might find that a portion of his followers would reproach him for bringing the debate to a premature close. The Leader of the Opposition consequently, before replying, would have to consult with the more ardent and impetuous spirits of his own Party. He must make more of their views, or else he might divide his Party in giving the Government his support. Supposing the Leader of the Opposition had on this occasion said that he would consent to the clôture with two-thirds' majority, would he not have exposed himself to the assaults of the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock? A numerical majority, whether two-thirds or any other number, except the very smallest, meant the Opposition vote as a whole. They might as well have a four-fifths or any other majority, except the very small minority alluded to by the noble Lord; because it meant, would the Opposition as a body vote in order to support the Business of the opposite Party? Therefore, they must have negotiations between the two Parties, for it stood to reason that, unless some price were given, the Leader of the Opposition would say he could not insure the two-thirds. There would be no principle more demoralizing and weakening to Her Majesty's Opposition than a proposal of this kind, and he did not think it was in the interest of Parliament that Her Majesty's Opposition should be placed in such a position. In his opinion, no more potent proposal to demoralize the Opposition could be made than that to adopt the two-thirds' majority. The noble Lord the Member for Woodstock, alluding to the position of a Conservative Government when the Liberals were in Opposition, said that the support of any section of the Liberal Party could never be relied upon. But there was no occasion on which the Conservative Leaders would be opposed by any considerable section of their own supporters when a Liberal Government was in Office. Although it might be called two-thirds, it would mean that the whole Opposition must be with them with the exception of some particular minority against which both sides might be prepared to strike. Hon. Members must, therefore, agree with the Prime Minister that a two-thirds' clôture would be no use whatever. A question had been put with regard to Obstruction. It was said—"Do you intend to strike at Obstruction?" But Obstruction was contagious, and, as the House knew, it was not invented, by the Irish Party. It pre-existed, and they knew the quarter from whence it originally came. It would not be safe, nor sufficient, nor would it be right, to strike simply at one minority, regardless of the fact that the general Business of the House was obstructed as they had seen it over and over again. He had no alarms for the future, such as some hon. Members had expressed. If he had, he should not think they could be conjured away by a miserable Amendment which would yield to the first pressure brought against it; but he believed the best way to stem the danger which hon. Members opposite seemed to anticipate with regard to the future was to raise the character of the House, and to restore efficiency to their debates; and he did not know that they could do so by any better means than by supporting Her Majesty's Government as regarded the way in which they were prepared to deal with the Resolution.

Motion made, and Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned,"—(Mr. A. J. Balfour,)—put, and agreed to.

Debate adjourned till To-morrow.

House adjourned at twenty minutes before Six o'clock.